1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method and installation for removing water from, drying and/or conditioning fibrous, porous or filament materials.
It applies to the removal of water from, to drying and/or conditioning of the most diverse fibrous materials, whatever form they take.
It applies, more particularly, to fibrous textile materials before spinning (in the form of flocks) during spinning (worsted yarns or tops), or after spinning (in the form of threads or filaments), as well as woven or knitted products.
The invention also applies to fibrous, porous or filament materials which are not textile materials such for example as non woven webs.
The invention is particularly well adapted to removing water from, drying and/or conditioning materials in the form of conical or cylindrical reels formed by winding a thread or filament on a perforated rigid or spring support or thread packets, that is to say volumes formed by winding threads or fibers without a support, or else yarns or filaments in the form of hanks.
2. Discussion of the Background
Water removal and drying installations are already known in which the two operations are carried out in one and the same enclosure, by forced air circulation through the material to be treated, alternately from the outside towards the inside and vice versa, with possible heating of the air at least during the drying phase.
The applicant has moreover already constructed such installations with or without a heat recovery device, whether this latter is of the air/water type, i.e. with production of hot water from the hot air leaving the dryer and which is cooled in said exchanger or of the air/air type, i.e. in which the hot air leaving the dryer is cooled while heating the incoming cold air, the heat being thus directly recovered from the dryer itself.
Other known installations, although they are satisfactory, are however generally provided for a specific use, both as to the materials to be treated are concerned and as to the treatment method and/or equipment, so that they do not have the characteristics of flexibility which are necessary at the present time, current practice requiring treatment of products of different natures and/or carrying out of a multiplicity of different treatments on the same material, or else using different treatment materials.
It is a general aim of the invention to provide a method for extracting water from, drying and/or conditioning fibrous, porous or filament materials as well as an installation for implementing such a method, in which the versatility is considerably increased, not only with respect to the different types of materials to be treated, but also to the different treatments which may be contemplated, or else to the equipment which may be used.
It is also an aim of the invention to provide a method and installation for implementing such a method which appreciably reduces the time for treating the materials while ensuring an excellent quality of the products obtained;
Finally, a further aim of the invention is to provide a method and installation for implementing such a method for carrying out the necessary treatments on fibrous, porous filament or similar materials, in a multiplicity of different modes, depending on the wound or packaged types of presentation of said materials and/or depending on the desiderata of practice for obtaining in each case the best possible results.